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I want to thank you dear readers for reading and for all the reviews I got for chapter 13.

I'm happy you are enjoying the story, if there is ever something that you unlike more than the other you can feel free to also state that on your comment.

I hope you like chapter 14 and the ErzaxJellal interaction, please be aware that Jellal and Erza are still knowing each other and I need to make it slow but sure, after this camp things will go up faster but I can't say anything more xD And yes I will try writting more frequently.

Enjoy...

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Disclaimer: Fairy Tail and its characters belong to Hiro Mashima!

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Chapter 14: Heating up

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"Tell me Natsu… Don't you think you will throw up once the competition start?" Lucy was rolling her eyes at her pink haired friend, they had two hours left and the boy had eaten probably all the food you could find at that place. "Even Gray has already stop."

"Itch ohay Luchy, mon wohy." Natsu replied chewing.

"Don't talk while eating." Lucy shouted disgusted.

"Don't worry Lucy, even if that clumsy dunce is unable to fight, we still have me" Gray pointed a finger at himself, provoking their friend.

Natsu glared at Gray and immediately swallowed all the food he had on his mouth. "What did you say you dipstick?"

Their foreheads were now touching, their eyes determinately sending sparks back and forth.

"I don't think this is the right time for you childish fights, you two." Ultear rebuked, getting a little bit annoyed at both.

"The icy nerd started it!" Natsu exclaimed, not moving an inch from his rival-friend.

"Because you fire brain only think about food." Gray insisted.

"Just stop you two!" Levy ordered. "We need to think about how to win this, the fact we didn't even know half of the activities they held here is only a proof we are at a big disadvantage."

"About the first challenge, I can handle it." Gajeel declared lazily.

"Well then apart from the first one, we can't really make out a strategy if we didn't try any other, right?" Ultear recalled them.

"You're right, we only have less than two hours left too, not enough time to go check on those." Lucy added.

"There's no good about dueling on it, let's just enjoy while we can." Natsu stated, laying down the nearest bench he found. "I'll just take a nap here."

"Is that how you enjoy yourself?" Gray rebuked, staring down at his stupid friend.

But it was too late as the pink head boy had already fallen asleep, making them all stare in disbelief.

"Well, he is kind of right." Gajeel whispered, already leaving them and going elsewhere, taking Levy with him.

"Then, let's just meet here at 2pm, don't go too far." Ultear also left the rest of them.

One by one went off their own way leaving Gray and Lucy with a sleeping Natsu behind.

"Well, what should we do now?" Lucy pondered out loud.

"How about we just wander around for a bit? Doesn't seem like this idiot will wake up anytime soon." Gray proposed.

"Well, seems the best thing to do." Lucy accepted and as they started to go on their own way as well, Lucy glanced back and saw Gray trying to write on Natsu's face.

"Gray!" She shouted, not believing these two childs. She halted the black haired child and dragged him away from the other.

Going around for a while didn't seem so bad, they wouldn't be far away from the destination point and they would spend those two hours quickly, as neither of them wanted to really waste any more time since they were all excited and nervous about the outcome of this challenge.

…

Erza had left the others behind quickly so no one would suspect about her behavior. She was tired and feeling like she was about to just accept sleeping on a rock nearby, since she didn't have time even to come back to their assigned house, but she didn't want to waste her time on sleeping either way. The red head didn't want to worry anyone, so for these two hours left, she thought about eating and meditate about a strategy, the girl knew there was no way in hell those people would play clean. She really wanted to rest as her head felt light, but she knew there was no time for that.

She winced as the pain was only now getting to her since the adrenaline left her body.

As the girl was checking out how much money she had to buy something to eat, someone stepped in front of her, not intending to move.

Erza glanced up a little upset but once she recognized the face her expression changed to confusion. After blinking a few times, she decided to talk. "W…What's wrong?"

The blue haired boy with a red tattoo under and above his right eye, slightly annoyed, grabbed her right wrist and dragged her with him.

"O..Oi, what are you doing?" Erza asked beyond confused, she really didn't have the strength to get away from his firm hold, not that she tried anyway, she just wanted to know what was happening.

"Taking you to the infirmary." Jellal simply declared.

Erza's heart skip a beat, still confused about the whole scene. The red head didn't know what to say or to do, she didn't understand why he would say something like that.

The boy couldn't possibly know about what happened, so what was all of this?

"Why? I'm not sick."

"You aren't. But that wound on your arm needs to get treatment." The boy implied.

Erza was taken aback with his declaration, how could he know about it? Her eyes turned to her upper arm as to make sure she still had the jacket covering for it. She spotted a tinge of red now more visible with the time and bit her lower lip.

How…

She briefly remembered about Natsu holding her arms in his hands and she cursed him mentally. The president wondered if this boy was the only one to notice.

"I didn't notice it had opened again." The girl thought out loud.

"How did you do that?" He questioned the girl, still not looking at her.

"I… felt and… a rock brushed on my skin." She tried to lie as they reached the infirmary.

Jellal sighed but said nothing else, still pushing the girl into the tent.

Once they got in, Jellal let go of the girl's arm and glanced around, searching for a doctor.

"You can go now, even without a doctor I can treat it correctly." Erza pointed out, while taking some bandages and alcohol from the medical cupboard, she was really thankful for his worry but the girl wished he would just leave at this moment.

Jellal frowned. "Why do you have to do everything on your own?" He stated, taking the supplies from her hands while she sat down on a bed. "Just let me see it."

Erza's eyes narrowed. She was going to answer his question stating why she could do it on her own, but their conversation at the Fairy Hills living room came into her mind and she decided not to, It wasn't like she would be able to convince him. Somehow this boy always had a kind of spell, saying everything she didn't want but needed to hear.

She took off her jacket to check on the wound and realized Riku was right earlier for saying it was deep, she didn't expect to be like that, it was like half of the blade had penetrated her skin.

"So, are you telling me a rock did that?" The boy smirked, but deep inside he was still annoyed.

Erza pouted embarrassed and decided to stay quiet.

Jellal sat beside her at the bed and started to clean her wound against her protests, his fingers brushing her skin made her shiver and she couldn't understand why.

"Was this Sabertooth's doing?" He asked still focused on her wound.

"It's…" The girl sighed and gave up on lying to the boy. "Just please don't say anything to anyone." She pleaded, glancing nervously somewhere else than him. "I.. don't want to worry them."

Jellal stared at her thinking about the conversation they had before, he knew this girl hated worrying her friends and that was one of the motives she did everything on her own, it was unnerving. "I won't."

He sighed and grabbed some of the bandages to start putting them around her wound. If she told him that, it was only proof he was right and it was something these people planned.

The boy pondered about how Minerva came by herself earlier. It was mostly sure she had already foreseen this. If she knew about it and challenged them, what was the objective?

When she challenged them she had done it mostly because the girl knew they would surely lose as they hadn't experience over most of the things they would be doing, but even so she couldn't be sure they never did that before, so she made teams out of nowhere, limiting their strategy. Choosing people before knowing the activities they would be doing was a great move, lessening their possibilities of winning to at least 60%, but even with that it was still not logical to him, letting them chose the members was a stupid move to make, they would be obviously choosing the people with greatest mobility and reflexes they had, the ones better at sports and with most resistance.

Jellal's eyes widened for a second before going back down. Of course.

It was all clear now, how stupid of him to not to think of this before. Minerva knew all too well they would at least include Erza on their team. Besides her being the president of the student council, she was also one of the most dependable energetic person, being also good at sports and fighting. Minerva planned this all along, striking Erza and taking their possibilities of winning down to 40%, assuring their victory for an almost sure win. Of course he knew her reasons weren't only because of that, something about revenge to the girl for what she had done to Sting and Rogue was also a reason. And they knew she would participate even though there was no rules saying every member of the team had to do it at least once. Simple reasons for this being Erza and her stubbornness and some of the activities being a team task, making all or a number of them forced to join in.

Even though all of this was clear, he had still to know their objective behind this confrontation, was it really just to humiliate them, or did they have another goal?

"Are you alright?" The boy heard Erza ask him, he forgot how lost in his thoughts he was until now.

He finished to bandage the wound and looked straight at her, like he was still thinking about something.

"Thanks." She mumbled. "You always end up helping me, somehow." It was true, the girl didn't understand how it was that every time this boy seemed to notice what was happening around her.

Erza yawned and took her hand to her head, feeling light again. 'Maybe I should go eat something."

"Just rest." He ordered, pushing her down. "I'll go grab you something to eat. It's better if you sleep a little before the competition." Jellal got up from where he was sitting and started leaving.

"Wait, how can I sleep now? We only have one hour and half before it starts." She blinked confused, feeling a little embarrassed by the situation.

"It's ok." He assured her, looking over his shoulder. "I'm pretty sure Gajeel will take on the first challenge. With all the preparations and what not, it will end only over 3pm, so you have time to rest at least for two hours."

"But…"

He turned around to face her properly, staring into the stubborn girl's eyes.

"Erza." The girl flinched at the sound of her name, she was pretty sure this was the first time he called her by her name and it made her feel so many unknown emotions, she wasn't sure what to think of it. "I told you before didn't I? If you don't want for your friends to worry about you, at least take care of you and show them they don't have to."

She recalled similar words in her mind and she knew he was right, as usual.

"Sorry." The girl murmured, glancing at the ground for a second.

Jellal smirked and teased her before leaving. "If you rest it would be better for us, we can't win if you decide to faint at the middle of a challenge now, can we?" He turned around and smiled when he spotted her angry face muttering some non-sense to herself, he didn't want her to feel sorry about what happened when it wasn't really her fault.

Erza saw him leave and closed her eyes, falling asleep as she made herself comfortable on the bed. She hated the sense of feeling so vulnerable in front of someone, especially in front of the blue haired boy with the red tattoo… He made her feel weird, she didn't know what kind of emotion was this but it wasn't one the girl wanted to discover. She was afraid, the same feeling she had when she lost her mother and the person she considered as her grandfather, she was afraid of having that same feeling again, and so she denied all kinds of emotions coming from other people or herself. These emotions… Erza wanted them all away, still… this boy…

…

Jellal was paying a happy old man that just sold him one of his hotdogs. He had bought a small salad and a hotdog for the girl, thinking she would need to recover her strength.

The blue head was brooding about the time he was wasting with these people he didn't want to get close to, instead of searching for the girl his father sought.

He looked over his phone, reading a message Ultear sent him. "First challenge will be taken by Gajeel, you can come in later."

It was just as the boy thought, what bothered him was the reason Ultear told him to come later, did she know he was with the president?

He sighed while walking back to the medical tent, hopping Ultear wouldn't say a thing about it to the others.

As the blue haired boy walked inside, he spotted the scarlet head sleeping and laid her food on the small table beside her bed. The boy stared at Erza's calm face and decided to sit down on the chair next to her bed and text Ultear back, the challenge would be starting in one hour and he was wondering about something.

"Do you know what the next challenge is?"

He pondered about the situation, if the next challenge was a team one, it was most likely Erza would be participating.

After his phone beeped again, he clicked on the 'read message' from Ultear and read it, attentively.

"We still don't know, the teacher said he would only tell after the first one. It's better if you and the pres get down here by the time it's done. I'll cover for you for the time being."

So she knew about it.

Jellal could only wonder about how obvious he had been these past days.

He glanced over to see the sleeping girl and analyzed her calm and pretty face, an half smile appearing on his face before he could shake his head to expulse weird thoughts off his head.

He didn't understand why he was being so attached to this girl these past events, why he was helping her out or why he couldn't stay away from her. He couldn't decide if the girl was interested or if it was something else… but for now he decided to find out by the end of this school camp, it would be another issue aside from his mission.

This will be a long week.

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AN: Erza doesn't have experience whatsoever about love in this fanfic, she was always trying to do things on her own, this is why she can't understand some of the emotions she is feeling. Jellal is also confused but more for the denial part hahaha xD

Anyway, as I said, I need them to be close to each other first, a lot will happen so look foward to it :D

See you next time.